Linds, you guys rocked it this weekend! Tons of awesome comments from people on the sidelines, can't wait to see how it goes next season for you!

The girls and I had a pretty good weekend, Zuma made the cut for freestyle which means we had to do a second round. She ended up placing 9th overall and 9th in Open Freestyle. I can't believe we broke the top 10!! Naperville draws in some of the best competitors in the country, it was incredibly difficult competition. That was my goal and didn't think we would be able to accomplish that this year, so looks like I need to come up with a new goal for next year! Baby dog Zinga placed 13th in Open Freestyle, very proud of her.

A lot of things went wrong during our rounds, a lot went right. I'm still feeling like I'm just getting my feet under me, still feeling like I'm fumbling around this season. There are so many tiny details that need to be worked out that it is becoming overwhelming. I'm looking forward to the end of the season, just so that we can really focus on improving the things we desperately need to improve on.

Two more comps yet this year, next weekend is the Minnesota Disc Dog Club State Champs, Zuma and I are currently in first place for the Club Cup. Hoping to hold onto that ranking and bump up Zinga a few places too. Then we just have a Skyhoundz Disc Dogathon 2014 Qualifier in October. Two more comps. I need to hold it together for that much longer.

ETA: here's some video.

This is Zuma's first round of freestyle from Saturday. I broke two big rules: don't try things again (I shouldn't have even attempted that footstall with it so slippery out there) and don't point your butt at the judges for a footstall!!
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Here's Zinga's round. I forgot half of her routine, oh well. She's going to get a whole new routine over the winter, it's too similar to Zuma's right now.
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Oh my goodness, huge congrats to both of you on your amazing accomplishments! What a great weekend. Looooove all of your routines. Your dogs are so fast and enthusiastic. Clearly they love what they do. Keep rockin` it!

Everybody looks so good!! It's so much fun to watch these. Zuma looks really awesome and the puppies are coming along really nicely.
I really really don't need another dog sport but I really want to teach Payton a lot of these moves...

It's so much fun watching everyone and Sara and her girls are just amazing. Especially considering they just started last year!

Oh! And Nina with Rue the Coolie was there too! She did great, she's got an awesome arm on her. So much merle.

I found one last comp in Oct to go to and it's a Skyhoundz DiscDogathon Qualifier so I'll be going to that! Be the first time we'll be competing in Open :yikes:

My completely novice advice to all the people in this thread that have been avoiding competitions because you aren't ready? GO!!! It's so much fun! Everyone is super nice, you learn a ton and just getting your dog out there and playing is a rush! Do it!

Each venue has their own scoring system. Last weekend we did a UFO Major and an AWI Qualifier, so both have their own scoring.

Most venues score based on the following categories or some variation of them: creativity, teamwork, dog skills, handler skills, safety and catch ratio.

USDDN has the most subjective scoring system out there, they require 7 out of 9 items on their list to be completed in a freestyle routine.

Skyhoundz is the only venue that counts catch ratio directly into the freestyle score, the other venues use it as a tie-breaker.

Toss and catch is scored based on distance of the catch with bonus points given in most venues for all four feet off the ground or the dog landing in a bonus zone. The point values range per venue.

Most venues combine the freestyle score with the toss and catch score for an overall score. How they do this (double the freestyle score, include the second round, etc) is dependent on the venue. You will see Freestyle scores, Toss and catch scores and then an overall combined score for both.

Ok, here is a session from the other day. Mostly things are going well, she figured out catching!! Yay. So that is pretty cool.

As you can see a few times she gets distracted (by the cat, etc) and drops the disc early. The first time for some reason I go pick it up (it's funny how I notice these things afterward watching the video), though in retrospect I definitely should have asked her to pick it up and bring it in. Then I get her to play some tug before throwing it to remind her that bringing it all the way in is fun (she can get a bit caught up in the chasing part of the game and forget the rest of it). Not sure if this was "right" but it seemed to work.

Honestly though, I would've split that session in half. Played for about a minute and 30 seconds, sent her off to sniff things or just to chill and then called her back after a few minutes for another short session. She started to disengage from you towards the end, so that's your cue that the next session needs to end sooner.

Love it though! Her retrieve is looking awesome, she's tracking the disc well, driving well ahead on the go-arounds. Very nice!

The Zoom Crew did awesome this weekend at our club's State Championships! It was a fun weekend full of disc dogging, drinking, camping, beer frisbee and cornhole. So much fun! The dogs and I are struggling to make it through this morning at work!

We brought home way too much hardware, but I'm glad we were able to end this season on an awesome note. We won't be competing locally next year except for qualifiers, as I would rather watch other teams win and help out the club by judging and being more involved with the behind the scenes at comps. We are going to step into the "big lake" next year more than we were able to this year by heading to the major qualifiers, out of state comps and hopefully a few National/World events as well.

Our results for the weekend:Zuma - 2nd Open Freestyle, 3rd Open D/A, 3rd Open Overall
I didn't play Zuma on Sunday, rather borrowed her to two people that didn't have dogs of their own to play. She won the Men's Longshot division with a handler she's never played with before!

Zinga - 1st Open Freestyle, 2nd Open D/A, 1st Open Overall, 2nd Women's Longshot and the 2013 MNDDC State Champion!

Zip Tie - Zip played an awesome round of novice D/A with Tim, but placed just outside of the rankings. They made up for that though on Sunday with a 3rd place in Men's Longshot!